teen injures spine

Boy injures spine, mom has a mail order degree from a natural healing degree. Mom wants to treat boy at home. Doctors don't agree, judge sides with doctors.

Should the government intervene?

PHILADELPHIA A judge on Monday refused to let the parents of a hospitalized Chichester High School wrestler treat his spinal injuries at home with alternative medicine but left unresolved the battle between his family and doctors over his care.

The case underscores the long-standing clash between medical professionals and parents who eschew, for religious or other reasons, mainstream medical treatment. Some experts say the new flood of information - and misinformation - from the Internet only heightens the debate.

Vermell Mitchell says she is acting as she does not for religious reasons, but rather out of her long-standing aversion to conventional medicine. She said she holds a degree in naturopathy from the Trinity School of Natural Healing, a nondenominational Christian school in Indiana that allows students to earn degrees by mail.

Read more: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/02/07/1855888/judge-refuses-to-let-parents-of.html#ixzz1DTtIfZUb

I say if the mom wants to be nutty let her be nutty with her own health.

The boy needs real care/intervention. If the mother is standing in the way , the gov't should butt in.

Mom can do Reiki and give the kid Bach Flower Remedies while a real doctor works on his physical healing.

There is plenty of precedent that if a parent endangers their own child, the government can come in and take the child away. I didn't bother to read the link, so I don't know the details here, but if the real doctors can offer real healing, and the parent's treatment would injure the child, then the government has every right to step in.

However, if the real doctors are just going to poke and prod the kid, and still be unable to heal him, and the mom is going to do something to make him more comfortable and not harm him, then the mom should be able to be a mom.

It really depends. I have to assume the judge looked at the facts and looked out for the kid's best interests.

Proof that mom is insane ... the child's name is "Mazeratti Mitchell"

wolf;710665 wrote:

Proof that mom is insane ... the child's name is "Mazeratti Mitchell"

still better than tara gabriel gramophone galaxy getty.

A misspelling of a sports car? Seems unseemly for a hippy type.

Here, meet my son Lambert Genie, and his sister Far Aerie.

Stupid. :headshake

Family members shouldn't be allowed to do whatever they please to a child or a relative who is helpless. I just found out that an aquaintance of mine marched over to the hospital and disconnected his brother-in-law's oxygen supply because "it was time for him to die." Well, the BIL was not a vegetable on life support or something. He suffers from COPD and had a bad bout of bronchitis so he had to go on O2 for a while.

There are a lot of flakey if not downright crazy people out there, and most of them have families. Family members should get the same protection as anyone else would.

I'm fine with the parents doing whatever they want so long as the child is OK with it.

BUT! They all have to sign a waiver stating that when the child is crippled for life because of the parent's stupidity, they agree to NEVER ask for, or accept, any gov't. money in any way to assist in future medical care costs.

Sheldonrs;710814 wrote:

I'm fine with the parents doing whatever they want so long as the child is OK with it.

Sure, but can minors give consent? A parent has a lot of influence with a child, and can convince them to consent to something that's not in their best interest. We don't let minors consent to sex, for example.

Sheldonrs;710814 wrote:

I'm fine with the parents doing whatever they want so long as the child is OK with it.

BUT! They all have to sign a waiver stating that when the child is crippled for life because of the parent's stupidity, they agree to NEVER ask for, or accept, any gov't. money in any way to assist in future medical care costs.

I figure if the kid croaks, it'll save money in the same gov't money and medical care costs years down the road. I doubt his parental unit(s) are steering him in any good direction anyway.

I'm not sure his life is endangered, just his ability to move.

:bolt:

Yeah, I don't really mean that...but I thought everyone wanted a teeny-tiny government who stays out of people's lives?

Sure, the woman is a crackpot. The kid is no baby, though, he's 16. What does HE want? If he wants what his mother wants we all say he's brainwashed to think like his mother and that we know what is best (see paragraph 1) and if he says he wants the, I don't know, procedures (the article wasn't clear on what isn't happening that should be happening and the mother says he's now fine...who to believe?) then give him the procedure(s), and the gods of medicine can smugly 'fix' him. Case closed.

[/devil's advocate]

glatt;710823 wrote:

Sure, but can minors give consent? A parent has a lot of influence with a child, and can convince them to consent to something that's not in their best interest. We don't let minors consent to sex, for example.

Yes, but in many cases they listen to a young man of 16. I'm thinking of a custody battle in which the teenager says he would prefer to live with one parent over another.

The kid's wishes certainly can come into play.

What a minor can consent to varies from state to state. In Pennsylvania the age for medical consent is 18, for mental health it is 14, for example.

Pennsylvania's Sexual Consent law is multilayered.

Shawnee123;710826 wrote:

The kid is no baby, though, he's 16. What does HE want? If he wants what his mother wants we all say he's brainwashed to think like his mother and that we know what is best (see paragraph 1) and if he says he wants the, I don't know, procedures (the article wasn't clear on what isn't happening that should be happening and the mother says he's now fine...who to believe?) then give him the procedure(s), and the gods of medicine can smugly 'fix' him. Case closed.[/devil's advocate]

I done thunk like my parents when I was 16.
In terms of making sensible long term life choices - especially in an emotionally charged situation - the majority of 16 year olds are not adults.

What am I saying?
I make few sensible long term life choices even now!

Heh, I don't dwell in the land of sensible choices either, though I visit from time to time. I'm pretty sure I didn't think much like my parents at 16...but I don't know. I suppose if it were something they felt strongly about I might adopt their views. I know I thought a lot like my mom about some things, she always having been progressive and liberal.

I was looking at the other angle. We all want to think of the children, but these cases are rarely so cut and dried.

Honestly, I am torn, but there is very little "real" information to go on (as to be expected, privacy being important.)

I can't possibly weigh the merits of either side without understanding the injury itself. My understanding is that a spine injury is generally treated with physical and occupational therapy, and there isn't much more you can do for it from a medical standpoint. Maybe the doctors want to try some kind of surgery to reattach something, and she and the kid don't think it's worth the pain/risk?

Like glatt said, without more details about what the doctors want to do and what the mom wants to do, I have to give the judge the benefit of the doubt. It sounds more like she wanted to do something iffy, since his ruling was that she could not "treat" him herself with whatever it was she wanted to do, but she also didn't have to take the doctors' offered treatment either. For him to rule against a treatment entirely means it's probably beyond even fringe-accepted things like acupuncture and such.


Edit: I just figured out a way to view the whole article without a registration. Kid is improving on his own after a "bruised" spine which left him briefly paralyzed, but he is regaining movement. Doctors want to give the kid steroids to clear up inflammation, and do neck surgery to insert metal rods which could prevent possible further damage, in case he falls or whatever during this precarious healing time. Mom wants to use herbs to reduce the inflammation and physical therapy to regain his strength.

This makes me want to side with the mom, but again, the article mentions previous child endangerment charges that had been dropped, so there's obviously still more going on here.

hard sayin' not knowin'

Shawnee123;710865 wrote:

Heh, I don't dwell in the land of sensible choices either, though I visit from time to time. I'm pretty sure I didn't think much like my parents at 16...but I don't know. I suppose if it were something they felt strongly about I might adopt their views. I know I thought a lot like my mom about some things, she always having been progressive and liberal.

I was looking at the other angle. We all want to think of the children, but these cases are rarely so cut and dried.

Honestly, I am torn, but there is very little "real" information to go on (as to be expected, privacy being important.)

privacy is important however people who decide to heal their kids thorough spiritual healing is just wrong imo, watched a kid break his ankle in football practice and his mother summoned God. really? no.he never played sports again.

Michael Smerconish did an interview with "Mom" earlier this week. The kid needed the medical intervention. Amongst the medical professionals and any sane human, of that there was no doubt.

Mom termed herself as a medical professional, but Michael revealed that she had gotten her degree online via some school I cannot remember.

She sounded like a self convinced faith/herbal/hope healer.

I believe the Judge called it properly and the state should step in.